The State of Music in the Mainstream!

The Golden Miller

I read alot of opinions on how people view music these days, and the reasons they give as to why original music by original bands is pretty much dead, well in the mainstream anyway. And it's baffling the extent as to just how many people don't know why it disappeared. The mid 00's was the last generation of real bands dominating the mainstream, Razorlight, Keane, Franz Ferdinand, Kooks, Killers, Libertines, Bloc Party, Kasabian etc etc. Then the free downloading started. Anyone over a certain age could download for free.

These bands made their money, but it's the next generation it's effected. The way it works, is radio stations give airplay to what sells. The only people buying music by the end of the 00's was basically 15 year old girls, not knowing how to download. Bands coming through couldn't sell music, therefore get no airplay and exposure, and we've seen the results since. People try to give all these other reasons, but thats what happened.

You then get the brigade who say your just grumpy, that everyone says "music was better in my day". Thats a moot point here. It implies there's actually bands in both generations to compare. There simply isn't any in the last generation. Then you'll have the lads who say there's still bands there, you just have to look for them. Maybe so, but you shouldn't have to. Up until circa 2010, yes there was always manufactured pop acts, but half the chart also included real bands.

Without real bands, original acts and songwriters getting nationwide exposure, idea's can't be pushed forward. The last 14 years has just been regurgitated throwaway music. What classics from that period will still be around in 30 years? We all want real bands to headline festivals, not one modern band big enough to play slane, formed after 2010. How long can we keep wheeling out the same acts? Slane for example, used to be for the biggest new act of the day, now we can't even find one band to fill it, pop acts being put on stage. Post Malone and these lads starting to headline festivals. The festival season is now about what bands are coming out of retirement each year.

It's hard to know where music goes from here, it's in a very bad way. No Paul Heatons, Damon Albarns or even Noel Gallaghers coming through, writing original music. The concept of 4 lads picking up instruments, with fresh ideas, seems gone. Music once captured the imagine, Blur and Oasis, and general gossip and feuds, was always interesting if nothing else. Now music isn't even a topic in any sort of discussion. It's hard to see how it comes back, to the forefront of people imagination's, or what needs to be done

pgj2015

Bands wouldnt be my area really these days as im more into other genres of music but what about the likes of Fontaines D.C.? They seem like an original band who are decent and are very popular.

magicbastarder

What's changed? One big thing is the way music is 'consumed'

Maybe the rise of streaming services, and the collapse in income from actual sales, is playing a part. A band who would have been moderately successful in the 90s would have made a lot more money than a similarly popular band today. And with a band, where royalties could be split 4 ways that simply might mean they're not willing to put the graft in with no guarantee of payoff?

PP Lee

There’s still some really good indie and electronic music being made if you look for it although a lot of music in the mainstream is pretty dire. Mumble rap has to the worst genre out there at the moment. All autotuned, and the “artists” resemble mentally ill drug addicts with their tattooed faces and fake diamond studded teeth.

fitzparker

Because of streaming laziness has set in, everyone trying to make a quick song to get it out to stay relevant, and the end product is regurgitated shite, there is nothing original, but the teenage girls lap it up (exactly who its market is aimed at)

A funny story happened the other week, my brother and myself manage an underage girls team and had a few of them in the car on the way to a match, they asked for a song on spotify and then it shuffled. I mentioned to him if he noticed how many songs were just remixes of older songs (when I say older these songs were still big 15 years ago) as spotify shuffled to the next songs we counted 6 in a row that was just shite lazy lyrics over an old beat, for example (gangsters paradise, Blue dabba-di-dabba-do, tipsey, what is love (haddaway)

I'd expect it from new pop artist trying to get a 1 hit wonder, but some of these are by big names just trying to stay relevant, but being lazy and selling out doing it i.e Tiesto and David guetta…. these lads are around 20 + years they aren't short of a penny or their diary full with gigs.

magicbastarder

in the 60s, it was very marked how many of the hits were covers of songs which had only been out a year or two anyway; that's not changed.

but one thing that has measurably changed is how long it takes for the lyrics to kick in after the song starts - that's been getting shorter and shorter in order to prevent shuffling.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122176536#Comment_122176536

And Gangsta's Paradise was a remix of Stevie Wonder's past time paradise, and maybe Stevie stole that from Weird Al's Hamish Paradise.

ruth...less

Ye. I myself am pretty much running out of songs at this stage 🤣😂🤣

ruth...less

Good music and crap music were both able to share the mainstream (obviously there was always more obscure stuff on the side aswell). It created an interest for everyone (a comradery and a competitiveness) in the same thing but also allowed people to feel individual through their taste.

Sometimes great songs or fun songs overlapped and everyone enjoyed.

It allowed people to still express themselves through their music taste and feel part of something or a side of music that represented them. You can't really express your identity through music that no-one else around you ever hears...it's hard to have a conversation with someone who never ever heard of your band etc.

thereiver

Its hard to make a living as a new 4 piece band ,many small venues are closing, those venues were the places where bands would start off get attention and experience playing in front of a small audience.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/jan/24/over-a-third-of-uk-grassroots-music-venues-are-loss-making-charity-finds

most of the money go,s to A list artists or classic pop groups from the 90s, 2000,s from streaming and touring. new bands rely on tik tok or youtube to get a hit and reach a wide audience.

https://info.xposuremusic.com/article/music-industry-report-2023

Maybe young people have less money to spend on music with inflation and expensive rental costs.there seems to be less original songwriters appearing,

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/ninorino/various-lady-singers-songwriters-in-the-years-2000-to-2020/

just go to youtube and type in hits from the 90s,

or hits from the 2000,s and you,ll find a wide range of good music to listen to from a wide range of singers or pop groups .

Most people think the music from their youth was better , when you are under the age of 20 music is very important to you and has a powerful effect on you.

i don,t listen to music radio i have never heard most of the songs in the top 50

i mostly look at music videos on youtube .

maybe i,m biased ,i think in the last 5 years the standard of lyrics in pop music has fallen .

i don,t have mtv or vh1 on my tv

the 90s was the peak time for the music industry in regard to revenue when people bought cd,s just to listen to one hit song

then napster came along and young people realised i can download any song i want from the web and burn it to a cdr disc or onto an mp3 player.

theres still plenty of original music being made, apart from remixs of old hits.

i think theres plenty of good quality new music since 2014,

eg beyonce, lady gaga,billie eilish ,taylor swift,dua lipa, etc

ruth...less

Why did MTV stop playing music?

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122179817#Comment_122179817

Reality tv killed the video star.

Strumms

look at one of the most successful gimps now who has come on the scene… Post Malone…. A fella who charges people into ‘live’ gigs, just to watch him lip sync……a throughly disingenuous see you next Tuesday… charging 60 plus euros into Irish gigs, just to see him there with that looper grin and freakish expressions on his ugly mush while making a fortune off people whilst not being arsed actually singing.

Kids are ok with that now, can you imagine years ago, if that happened…. The artist would not escape the venue without a police or security escort . ⚠️

Paying 60 plus quid to look at this cûnt..gurn and mime for you with added acted out insincere affectations ….no thanks,

when kids expect little from the industry, they’ll get SFA…

L1011

Your definition of "real band" appears to be entirely based on "uses guitars".

ruth...less

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122179879#Comment_122179879

I know but why? They got more viewers for the shows I guess and just ran with that.

What was that show on network 2 on Saturday mornings Dave Fanning was it ? Always liked that on Saturdays, felt like the weekend was beginning.

Jack Daw

I would argue a large part of the problem is there is no money to be made from making an album anymore as you can stream them immediately for almost nothing so physical copies being sold are minimum.All the money for artists todays comes from concerts.

In order to listen to an album the music itself has to be excellent and you have to like the music for the music's sake whereas you can attend a live show and enjoy it even if you don't really like the music because attending a concert is an experience in and of itself and not purely about the music as it is as much if not more about the spectacle and level of performance rather than how good the music is.

By destroying musicians ability to make money from just creating great music it means there is less incentive to create great music.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122176617#Comment_122176617

Other one is that songs have gotten shorter generally, average at about 3.5 minutes. Spotify etc is less likely to recommend a longer song. So I think the algorithm definitely can negatively impact things like sitting down and choosing what to listen to. It's probably been happening to some degree since shuffle and mp3 players but Spotify probably accelerated it a bit further.

But honestly, it's probably a matter of actively engaging and choosing what you listen to. I can think of loads of great acts that I love listening to. Anna Calvi, Kneecap, The Smile, The National, Lankum to name a few and plenty of the super acts like Beyonce are superb singers. Music is still great if you put in the effort.

magicbastarder

it's also worth noting how much easier - and cheaper - it has become in the last couple of decades to make music in your bedroom. you don't need a bassist or drummer in the way you used to, to make music.

my wife did music in trinity in the late 90s, part of which was music technology. about ten years ago, a friend (who used to work professionally in a studio) showed her what he could do on a computer - she was impressed, what took her a week to do back then, he could do in probably ten minutes on the computer; and as mentioned, that was ten years ago.

Anesthetize

Music in the mainstream has always been in a state, for decades. Alternative music exists for a reason.

bodhrandude

I heard a rap version of the Genius of Love from the Tom Tom Club on the radio the other day that was unrecognisable, Tina Weymouth's vocal removed completely, I was not impressed. It reminded me of Black Eyed Peas mullicating The Police song Every Breath you Take.

_H80_GHT

I see the horrendous music as just another telling indication that this current young generation is the worst one yet. By quite a distance. They really are just the worst and their music is just a reflection of how bad they are.

ruth...less

Another thing is (not the main reason but just an outsider up the side)...that people are way more educated now or are bombarded with more information early on..when a reasonably intelligent artistic angsty teenager...who could have wrote beautiful confusing music in an attempt to sort out their feelings...feels emotional...they now turn to social media for 'advice' or for information... or a rebellious person who is angry at some unjust situation is not channelling that into art (or a different kind of 'art') but stuck in some debate online trying to be heard through likes and ❤️'s to get their point across...

nigeldaniel

I liked it when musicians did not lip sync to computer generated sounds. Nothing will ever outdo a drum and bass blasting away with a high tuned guitar. Nirvana singing lithium is doing the rounds in my head right now.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122183778#Comment_122183778

people your age run the music industry. not the kids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afam2nIae4o

nullzero

The biggest indictment of modern popular music is how dull it is.

At the very least there should be an element of chart music that makes the older generations at bit uncomfortable.

It's all a bi boring.

bodhrandude

One just needs to look at the recent Electric Picnic line up announcement, Noah Kahan, FFS and Calvin Harris as the late night DJ.

lawred2

At this stage music is ai produced. Sure how many songs did Taylor swift just do for a recent album!? Over thirty or something. It's too easy at this stage to make big money. Why waste time and energy on new talent?

magicbastarder

maybe the kids don't want to listen to dad music. or create it, either.

nullzero

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122186711#Comment_122186711

...

nullzero

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122186690#Comment_122186690

Yeah, everyone knows that Zeppelin and Floyd are tedious and never did anything as interesting as Imagine Dragons or Coldplay.

I get the whole point about older people being down on new music as a trope but in all honesty I remember my own parents and those of my friends being open to or actually fans of the contemporary bands or acts in the 90's. Good music is good music.

The problem these days is that the industry has been ruined, algorithms identify music that matches what is already popular and dictates what get attention.

Is good music still being made? Sure it is, but there's less of it and there's less incentive for people to make music because if it's not algorithm friendly it gets ignored.

Bad music has always existed, not everything was great back in the day but music was a broad church for the decades from the 50's to the 00's and there was something for everyone.

One of the biggest problems I have with music today is that trends have tended to take a long time to change. What's popular now would not sound out of place ten years ago.

Imagine in all music tin the 90's sounded like music from the 80's? There were constant changes and music evolved naturally, these days it's all the same all the time. But yeah, middle aged men listening to Zeppelin are the problem.

leakyboots

Theres amazing music out there, it's never been better. So much good stuff coming out each week. You're just not looking in the right places.

Get away from mainstream Irish radio for a start… that's a busted flush (apart from John Kelly and An Taobh Tuathaill).

nigeldaniel

OK OK so I can be accused of liking old school music but I will say Taylor Swift is OK [she puts a lot into her concerts] can't really name any modern bands I'm afraid. Arctic monkeys is about as modern as I go.

Montage of Feck

Really need to get back to buying albums on CD. Streaming has turned music into throwaway background noise.

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058352948/the-state-of-music-in-the-mainstream

I thought something similar in the past. I found that I was stuck listening to music from the late '90s and early parts of this century. I didn't tend to like what I was hearing on the radio or in clubs from.

There's plenty of great new music coming out all of the time. It might not necessarily be on the radio. You'll just need to go off the beaten track to find it Check out the Nialler 9 podcast or the All Songs Considered podcast. Both of those are likely to feature a lot of genres that you may not like but I'll bet they feature ones that you do as well. I find John Kelly's Mystery Train is a great place to pick up a wide array of music as well.

I do believe as well though that it's a lot harder to have the same emotional enjoyment of music when you are older than when you were, say a teenager. That's why most generations, coincidentally, think that music peaked right around the time they were 16 years old.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122190030#Comment_122190030

I think I've actually had a revitalized engagement in music since I started collecting vinyl. I have all the old stuff that I loved but also engaging with newer stuff that is a bit distant to what was used to.

PP Lee

8radio is another good online station for decent alternative and indie music. It’s run by Simon Maher, formerly of Phantom and TXFM.

Will Graham

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058352948/the-state-of-music-in-the-mainstream

How come Dark Tropics aren't in the mainstream? I like their songs 'Moroccan Sun' and 'Roses in the Nile'.

By the way, "alot" is not one word ,but two.

thereiver

Mtv gets better ratings showing reality shows they play maybe an hour of music videos before 11pm theres vh1 and mtv 2 .

I think gen z watchs videos on youtube or tiktok .if a singer has talent they put videos up on tiktok ,most record companys prefer to give contracts to a single person it takes longer to support a group with 4 or 5 people

i think in the 70,s and 80s, there was a whole system to support rock and pop groups like they would start off in small venues and then get a video on bbc top of the pops or mtv .

we have more radio stations avaidable but alot of them play songs from the 90,s ,2000,s era .

i think theres a study that says pop music now has much simpler melodys than the 80,s or the 90s most modern music is made using various computer programs so theres more production effects but less melody.

i can,t think of any modern band since 2015 that i would listen to

CalamariFritti

@thereiver

i can,t think of any modern band since 2015 that i would listen to

For instance The Mysterines are very good in places and She Drew The Gun is excellent. Plenty of others.

I know it's hardly underground but I can recommend BBC6 Music wholeheartedly. I'm an old fella (50s) myself but turns out I do find good newish bands through them. And if nothing else they have excellent DJs and great shows and they play good music for all tastes all the time and no ads and they have guys like Cillian Murphy and Iggy Pop doing regular slots for them. Its an excellent radio station which can be streamed easily through BBC Sounds app.

On a sidetone BBC6 late morning slot regular Mary Anne Hobbs is 60 now but her taste and knowledge would betray that and her voice… she just sounds lovely.

thereiver

My experience of BBC 6 music is they mostly play obscure music from hipster type bands I read sterogum and av club I have no interest in listening to BBC 6 i.d prefer BBC radio 2 .99 per cent of bands on BBC 6 never get on the charts at least on the top 40

Badly Drunk Boy

On a sidetone BBC6 late morning slot regular Mary Anne Hobbs is 60 now but her taste and knowledge would betray that and her voice… she just sounds lovely.

Mary Anne Hobbs is married to Miles Hunt from The Wonderstuff, who I just realised are still on the go, and touring.

CalamariFritti

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122864171#Comment_122864171

I suppose tastes are all different. To me the lack of top 40 would actually be a plus. Charts music has been terrible for some time now IMO. All through my life the music I listened to hardly ever made it into the top something anyway. I was always more a punk rock indy alternative bit of r&b guy.

conorhal

Rick Beto did a pretty good video on the strange death of the band, there are some pretty startling stats about it.
In the first half of the 1980's for example, there were 146 weeks where bands were no.1 in the charts (UK). In the first half if the 90's there were 141 weeks where bands were no.1 in the charts.
In the first 5 years of the 2010's that number was 3 weeks…. one of which was the Beatles… the other two were Pop Idol manufactured pop band Little Mix and some compilation album.
Those are some stunning numbers that really lay bare the steep decline of bands in the past couple of decades.
Here’s a mad one though, Beto’s casual experiment, looking at the top 400 artists on Spotify’s monthly rankings and found that only 3 bands on the list were founded in the last 10yrs.
To what does he contribute this decline? Well, the usual suspects, technology (you can be your own band these days), streaming and cultural: changing tastes, economics and the fact that being in a band can be fractious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_DjmtR0Xls

Now is that a bad thing for music though or just a move towards solo artists?
Well ‘studies show’ that perhaps music itself is devolving. Since the 1950’s, pop music has become melodically less complex, using fewer chord changes, and pop recordings are mastered to sound consistently louder (and therefore less dynamic) at a rate of around one decibel every eight years. They have, especially since the 2010’s become lyrically less complex.
A researcher put 15,000 Billboard Hot 100 song lyrics through the well-known Lev-Zimpel-Vogt (LZV1) data compression algorithm, which is good at finding repetitions in data. He found that songs have steadily become more repetitive over the years, and that song lyrics from today compress 22% better on average than less repetitive song lyrics from the 1960s. The most repetitive year in song lyrics was 2014 in this study.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/fb84bf19-29c9-4ed3-b6b6-953e8a083334

“Stop complaining you old fart!”
No, new music is sh1te, and the young folk agree with me!
42% of people polled on which decade has produced the worst pop music since the 1970s voted for the 2010s. These people were not from a particular aging demographic at all -- all age groups polled, including 18-29 year olds, appear to feel unanimously that the 2010s are when pop music became worst. This may explain a rising trend of young millennials, for example, digging around for now 15-30 year-old music on YouTube frequently. It's not just the older people who listen to the 1980s and 1990s on YouTube and other streaming services it seems -- much younger people do it too.

The uncanny valley of the bland.
Even live acts use auto tune these days, the constant pitch correction just strips voices of any unique inflection, the talent doesn’t really need to be all that talented any more to deliver a flawless performance and everybody sounds the same. I think this really impacts the ‘human connection’ and creates a musical ‘uncanny valley’ that can hurt the emotional impact of music. You can sort of see the same when it comes to films these days which are CGI’d and colour graded within an inch of their lives and to the point that everything feels artificial. Everything these days feels not only as if it was created for ‘the algorithm’, it feels created ‘by the algorithm’.

CalamariFritti

Couldnt agree more. Movies are the same. Mainstream movies that were actually good over the last 10 or 15 years can be counted on one or two hands. And half the good ones are sequels or remakes. I'm sure there is good indy and arthouse stuff but I'm not that much of a movie buff to know.

Of course things have also seen a shift towards TV series of which there have been good ones with good writing and everything. But in a way thats part of the same thing. TV series are more easily consumable as in stay home vs go to a theatre. Also ad revenue is probably much better. As with music it's all about easily consumable and ad revenue.

Also what struck me we havent really seen a next big thing since what? Techno, Brit Pop? Before that we had a succession of youth trends some of them quite political and protesting: RocknRoll, Beat, Hippie, Rock, Punk, New Wave, Indy, Alternative, Grunge, Techno, House, Brit Pop etc. Since the 2000s its kinda dead. Ok we had Gaga pop and 'Aaaahhh' rap and Ed fkn Sheeran plus whatever came out of the voice shows, but I mean seriously?

However I can say for sure in music there are still good artists out there. Even when I was 25 I wasnt looking for them on the weekly charts so in that sense not much has changed for me. And I'm sure when things go tooo much in one direction people will get fed up and next thing a new trend starts. We could be seeing a rebirth of bands and maybe we get to witness a new big thing yet.

The Golden Miller

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122866080#Comment_122866080

I agree there still is good musicians out there, but the reality is you shouldn't have to go looking for them. People will say there was always rubbish in the charts, and that's true, but half the charts used to be filled with real bands. Thats dead now.

And it is important for the growth of music, having real original songwriters and bands in the charts and mainstream. For them to get exposure and new ideas to the masses, so music can be pushed and evolved by others who hear it. That's simply dead now.

Basically music stopped evolving circa the end of the 00's, it was the last hurrah of real bands and solo artists getting into the mainstream, writing original material. Due to the afformentioned downloading. Again, this isnt a case of someone complaining that "music was better in my day". For that to hold true, you would need original music in both eras to compare. There is nothing now, original, to compare to former eras.

Even in the 00's youd have classics that will be remembered in decades to come. America by Razoright, Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol, Mr Brightside by the Killers, When the Sun Goes Down by Arctic Monkeys, Use Somebody by Kings of Leon, Fire by Kasabian etc etc etc. I couldn't name you one original song since after 2010, by an original act, that will be remembered. That's the state of "music" now. It's dead for all intents and purposes, just old riffs covered and regurgitated by commercial acts, with nothing new being offered.

Its a bad state of affairs tbh

Sgt Hartman

Autotune and fake accents are something I hear a lot of these days, and it’s a huge turn off. A good example of the latter is the song used in the An Post Tin Man ad being shown at the moment. The singer sounds like she’s singing through her nose.

thereiver

Look at rick beato his video how computers killed rock music on YouTube

He says 3 company's own most USA radio stations and they all use the same limited playlists they prefer not to play local regional music

Most pop music sounds similar as it processed and recorded on computers

I don't know why. All pop singers now sing with neutral accents or sound american

Uk pop singers don't sing in a British accent anymore

I don't think music is dead I think it's more bland and generic and lacking in original melody

Where.s the need oasis Blur or Fleetwood Mac ?

Ubbquittious

I have heard the "new music is sh1t" tripe many times so a few weeks ago I decided to torrent all the new releases for that week (about 600 or so songs) and started listening to them in the car. Surprisingly there are several good songs in there. I haven't found any real banger of a song in there but there's definitely a few that I'm looking forward to listening to again.

Most of them are perfectly listenable-to and only a small number so terrible that I've had to skip them.

If you listen to Classic Sh1ts/2FM and the likes or whatever Youtub/Spotify are pushing on you then most likely you will end up with shite music because it's who ever has the deepest pockets gets to decide what you hear.

thereiver

I think dua lipa future nostalgia was good as a pop disco album

NewbridgeIR

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122865620#Comment_122865620

You went straight down the listening to Dave Fanning / John Peel route?

I started off with chart music, like most people. Watching Top Of The Pops every week, buying Smash Hits. As I got into secondary school, my tastes widened and I started buying indie records & the NME but still kept an eye on the top 40 & still picked up Smash Hits from my local newsagent.

I bought Sonic Youth’s EVOL and Now That's What I Call Music 7 at the same time in the summer of 1986 and will never forget the record shop guy’s look of approval followed by disgust and contempt. The older I get, the less tolerance I have for music snobbery.  

CalamariFritti

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122873499#Comment_122873499

Not quite. I think I got an ABBA album when I was 11 or 12 or so, I think I had a pre-teen crush on Agneta I think her name is. At that time I was recording tapes off the radio chart shows like everyone else and got records from the library. I remember liking Alan Parsons Project, Joe Jackson, Jean Michel Jarre. 😀

But when I hit puberty I fell in with the 'wrong crowd' you might say. First real album I got was The Clash, Give 'em Enough Rope. First concert I went to no kidding was Peter & the Test Tube Babies next one was GBH. I must have been 15 or 16 around 1983, 1984. Then my mates and I we turned into music snobs. Wouldnt listen to charts as a matter of principle, quite childish, today you would call it hipster attitude :) And the bands… well, the more obscure the better. Stuff like The Cult and New Order would have been almost mainstream to me. I grew up in Berlin too and we had quite a good underground scene like that and we got a lot of small and obscure English and US bands into small venues. Remember seeing the Three Johns and there may have been 20 or 30 people and the pub was half full.